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“Make of yourself a light,”
said the Buddha,
before he died.
I think of this every morning
as the east begins
to tear off its many clouds
of darkness, to send up the first
signal – a white fan
streaked with pink and violet,
even green.
An old man, he lay down
between two sala trees,
and he might have said anything,
knowing it was his final hour.
The light burns upward,
it thickens and settles over the fields.
Around him, the villagers gathered
and stretched forward to listen.
Even before the sun itself
hangs, disattached, in the blue air,
I am touched everywhere
by its ocean of yellow waves.
No doubt he thought of everything
that had happened in his difficult life.
And then I feel the sun itself
as it blazes over the hills,
like a million flowers on fire –
clearly I’m not needed,
yet I feel myself turning
into something of inexplicable value.
Slowly, beneath the branches,
he raised his head.
He looked into the faces of that frightened crowd.

What are you cursing?
What are you hitting?
What are you loving?
Who is competing?
Where is this one?
Can you find them in the colors?
Why get angry at the Sun?
The moon doesn't care if your big or small,
So who is short and what is tall?

Poetry Corner

In the stillness by the empty window,
I sit in formal zazen.
Navel and nose in alignment
Ears parallel with shoulders.
Moonlight floods the room.
The rain stops, and the eaves drip.
Perfect the moment.
In the vast emptiness
my understanding deepens.